The Mind Reader
after C. E. Shannon & D. W. Hagelbarger · Bell Telephone Laboratories, 1953
Think of a bit — 0 or 1 — and press it. The machine has already guessed what you will choose. Be unpredictable. First to 25 wins.
| Pattern length | Your last n bits | …then 0 | …then 1 | Votes 0 | Votes 1 |
|---|
The circuit takes your last n bits (n = 0…7), counts every earlier time that exact run appeared, and notes which bit usually followed. Each pattern length casts −0.4(n−3)² + 5 votes, scaled by how lopsided its record is. The side with more votes becomes the guess shown here — committed before you press. Yes, peeking is cheating. The machine forgives you.
or use ← / → arrow keys
◉ In 1953, David Hagelbarger and Claude Shannon each built a relay machine at Bell Labs that predicted whether a human would choose “heads” or “tails.” Against 9,795 human choices, Hagelbarger’s machine was right 5,218 times — because people are worse at being random than they believe. This copy watches the last eight bits of your history for patterns you didn’t know you had.